Grand Prix Kobe Round 9 Roundup

At the end of day one there are multiple storylines coming to a close: who will end the day undefeated? What pro players make it to the second day? Who will narrowly miss day 2? I took a look at the 4 feature matches of round 9 to close out the day.

The second game went exact way Shuhei drew it up. Shuhei was able to remove and counter all of Ryosuke's major threats before landing an Ob Nixilis Reignited. From there Shuhei had complete control of the game, ending it with a Dragonlord Ojutai and ending day 1 undefeated.

Game 1 started off with a quick transformed Liliana, Defiant Necromancer from Kitaoka. Mihara could not find an answer to Liliana and it quickly began taking over the game. When Mihara did finally find an answer to the planeswalker, Kitaoka's army lead him to victory.

Game 1 was over in a flash: Fujimoto began with a super aggressive start dropping Ichikawa down to 12 by the third turn. From there Ichikawa could not grab a foothold on the game and perished a few turns later.

Game 2 looked better for Ichikawa. He had early removal for Fujimoto's creatures and creatures of his own to keep his life total healthy. It looked as if Ichikawa would be able to stabilize, but Fujimoto never ran out of gas; with no answers to Fujimoto's threats, Fujimoto took the match and ended the day at 8-1.

Takahashi was able to stabilize against the Atarka Red deck game 1 quickly with Mantis Rider and a Tasigur. The game stalled out from there, but Endo was able to use the combination of Become Immense and Temur Battle Rage to force Takahashi to block with all of his creatures to stay alive. Takahashi stabilized for a second time, but again Endo forced him to block with everything and used Temur Battle Rage again to wipe the board. Takashi stabilized for the third time in the game and Endo was finally out of gas; Takahashi was finally able to close out the first game.